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DeMint, Coburn, Hutchinson, Brownback introduce term limits constitutional amendment
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
11/10/09 2:06 PM EST
Four Republican senators have introduced a constitutional amendment to limit senators to no more than two six-year terms in office, and representatives no more than three two-year terms. To become law, the amendment must be approved by two-thirds majorities of both the Senate and House, and by three-fourths of the states.
Senators Jim DeMint, South Carolina, Tom Coburn, Oklahoma, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Texas, and Sam Brownback, Kansas, are the co-sponsors.
The 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits presidents to no more than two terms in office. Fifteen states have term limits for various officials, as do many local governments across the country.
DeMint said the amendment is needed because the power of incumbency has grown so great:
"Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians. As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buyoff special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power," DeMint said.
"I have come to realize that if we want to change the policies coming out of Congress, we must change the process itself. Over the last 20 years, Washington politicians have been reelected about 90% of the time because the system is heavily tilted in favor of incumbents. If we really want to put an end to business as usual, we’ve got to have new leaders coming to Washington instead of rearranging the deck chairs as the ship goes down.”
Coburn added:
“The best way to ensure we are truly a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, is to replace the career politicians in Washington with citizen legislators who care more about the next generation than their next election. The power of incumbency has created an almost insurmountable advantage for Washington politicians.
"Incumbency allows politicians to raise millions of dollars in campaign funds in exchange for earmarks. Incumbency gives Congress the power to raise money for itself – Congress just approved itself an increase of nearly $250 million from the U.S. Treasury that members will spend to promote themselves. Finally, with redistricting incumbents can choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. Term limits is the best way to break this cycle.”
To read the full statement on the proposal, go here.
Term limits were approved by voters in 23 states during the 1990s and the first item on the Republican Contract with America in 1994 was a promise to limit congressional terms. But after taking over both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, the congressional GOP leadership showed little enthusiasm for keeping their term limit promise.
Consequently, no term limits amendment was ever sent by Congress to the states. In the meantime, opponents of term limits succeeded in gaining a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that states cannot limit the right of voters to re-elect incumbents as often as they like.
The high court's decision has since been widely viewed as the last word on term limits, but the idea has a deep history in American politics. Known then as "rotation in office," several of the colonies limited the terms of multiple officials. During the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson proposed term limits for members of the Continental Congress, saying a limit was needed "to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress."
The Constitution did not include a rotation in office provision, but the concept was so ingrained in the political culture of the day that many members of Congress served only one or a few terms, then returned home. After the Civil War, however, as the power and importance of the federal government increased, the desire of congressmen to stay in office grew.
By the time of the New Deal, only about a quarter of the members of new congresses were serving their first terms. Today, as DeMint noted, the percentage of freshmen in a new congress is typically 10 percent or less.
Considering the state of the nation today, Jefferson's fears about the danger of allowing the same politicians to stay in the Continental Congress have been abundantly confirmed. For additional background on the history of term limits in the U.S. go here.
There you will find a superb piece in a 1994 edition of the Political Science Quarterly an article by Professor Robert Struble, Jr., whose great-granduncle, Rep. Isaac Struble of Iowa, was in the last class of first-termers to comprise a majority in the House of Representatives.
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